The Evolution of Man

by Skye Warren

  Sutton strolls in a wide arc, his posture deceptively relaxed, his blue eyes alert on the animal penned in with him. His heather-gray T-shirt clings to his muscles, the back darker with sweat. Worn jeans sketch the powerful lines of his thighs better than a bespoke suit ever could.

  “Whoa there,” he’s saying, his voice low and soothing. “I’m not going to hurt you, beautiful. You’re safe here. We’ll take as long as you need to believe it.”

  God, no wonder this man can tame horses. I’m halfway pliant from hearing him murmur promises of safety and patience. There’s something unique about Sutton, a core of absolute sincerity, a sensation deep in my bones that I can trust him.

  “Do the horses ever talk back?” I say, my voice soft. I’m careful not to make any sudden movements as I loop my arm over the thick plank of wood.

  Sutton doesn’t seem the least surprised to hear me, which confirms my suspicion that he knew I was here. Even though he doesn’t take his eyes from the horse, his attention encompasses the whole of the paddock. The whole of the land. It encompasses me.

  The corner of his mouth lifts. “Who says I was talking to the horse?”

  That surprises a laugh out of me. Always this man can surprise me, beguile me. Tease me into wanting something I’ve told myself would never work. “How long have you had her?”

  “A few months,” he says, taking another few steps to the side, coming an inch away from touching her before moving away. “But I’ve only just started taking her out. She had abrasions on her legs when I got her, and a lung infection that hadn’t been treated.”

  Unease moves through my stomach as I look at the beautiful animal. She’s dangerous and strong… and healthy. It hurts to imagine her as anything else. And underneath the rebelliousness I sense the dark tinge of fear.

  “Someone hurt her?”

  “They neglected her,” he says, his voice flat. “Which is the same thing when she needs to be taken care of. A friend of mine found her in a stall with someone he was doing business with. Bought her because he couldn’t stand to see the conditions she was living in. Almost put her down before he thought to call me.”

  Steel squeezes my heart. “Put her down?”

  Sutton takes another few steps, passing close enough to touch her but choosing not to. The horse snorts her protest but doesn’t move away from him. It strikes me that this is a dance, the athleticism and grace unmistakable, purpose imbued into his every movement.

  “It takes quite a bit of money to take care of a horse. Especially one who already has health problems. One who will still need to be broken.”

  His matter-of-fact tone takes my breath away. Does he think about people that way, too? Does he think about me that way? “Is that how you see her?”

  “Of course not. That’s why—”

  The pounding of my heart fills my ears. “With a dollar sign over her head? And if her medicine costs more than that, what’s the point of keeping her alive? She’s disposable anyway.”

  Sutton walks toward me, and suddenly I’m backing away. The safety I had felt on the other side of the fence evaporates beneath his piercing blue eyes. He ducks between the horizontal slats, coming toward me, making me back away until I finally remember to stand my ground. Then we’re face-to-face, and I’m confronted with the sheer size of him. In the paddock it had been theoretical, more like artwork to be admired. Standing in front of me, he breathes and moves with potent hunger. More than something to be wanted, he’s someone who wants.

  “That’s not how I see her,” he says, his tone gentle.

  “I’m sorry,” I say, breathless. “Of course you don’t. You’re taking care of her.”

  “She has a home here. Even if she never lets me ride.”

  “Okay,” I say, my chest tight.

  His eyes pierce my armor, seeing the secret fear I’ve worked hard to protect. That I’m only a series of numbers preceded by a dollar sign. That I’m a living, breathing line-item entry in a spreadsheet, no matter how much I pretend to be worth more than that.

  “I’m surprised you’re even speaking to me,” he says, his gaze turning dark. He looks at my lips for a moment. “Figured you’d be pissed about the price tag for the library.”

  “I thought you weren’t part of the company anymore.”

  “Resigned my position, which means I didn’t have a say. But I still owned my share of the company and profited from the deal that Bardot made with you.”

  “It was his decision to be an asshole. I just wish I hadn’t played into his hand.”

  “Then why are you still doing it?” The words are soft, but they fall like bullets.

  “I’m not.”

  “You think he doesn’t want you back in Tanglewood? Back in the library?”

  “He doesn’t care what I do.” I’m doing this for my mother, because I will do almost anything for her. Except for meet with the person from the hospice to help make her Death Plan. The name makes me shiver. Hurt and hurt and hurt, and then die. We don’t need a plan.

  We need a time machine.

  A quiet laugh. “Christopher Bardot is far from indifferent. He’s developing the luxury condominiums right next to the library, and guess who lives on the top floor?”

  I stare at him, disbelieving. But even while my mind refuses to accept this, my body turns warm. “Whatever happens next to the library isn’t my problem. I’m only concerned with restoring it. Will you help me? It’s important for the city.”

  And no one else will take the job.

  Every construction company I’ve tried has told me to tear down the building and start again. The words not structurally sound have been used more than once. If I were smart, I would actually listen to them, but I’m the queen of lost causes.

  Sutton looks away, toward the land. “I can’t say no to you, but it isn’t for the good of the damned city. And it’s not even for Christopher Bardot. Not anymore.”

  “Why would you have done it for Christopher?”

  He smiles without humor. “Why indeed?”

  I take a step toward him, close enough that I have to look up to meet the sky blue of his eyes. “You never did tell me why you went into business with him.”

  “My reasons don’t matter.”

  That’s the only warning before his head lowers, before his lips touch mine. Warm. Insistent. He kisses me the way the sun shines on the land, certain of its welcome. My body opens toward him in instinctive surrender, pleasure washing over me in waves.

  As quickly as he claimed me, he’s gone again. He steps back, leaving a cool breeze between us. There’s nothing sensual or intimate in his expression.

  I touch my lips as if I can hold some of his warmth there. I told myself I wasn’t interested in dating, but I can’t deny that I want this intimacy. It feels like breathing after being so long underwater. It feels like air. His blue eyes track the movement, hungry, belying the air of indifference in his stance.

  “You stopped,” I say, a little relieved, mostly sad. “Because I kissed Christopher?”

  “That was a wake-up call for me, but no. I’m not angry with you, if that’s what you’re asking. You can kiss whoever you want. And I’m the last person to judge you.”

  “Then why—”

  “I’ll restore the library because you asked me to. Like I said, my reasons don’t really matter. But I can’t be with you, Harper. Not like before. I can’t go there again.”

  My stomach lurches. I would have said I already knew that. That I’m not looking to be with any man, but the rejection hurts all the same. “Before, when you courted me.”

  A slight nod.

  That was the word he used. Courted. It only stopped when he found Christopher kissing me. And me kissing him back. Sutton may claim not to be angry about it, but what other reason could there be for him pulling back? Why else would he have left?

  “That’s good,” I manage to say. And I almost mean it.

  I’ve always been the girl every boy chased. The one who c
ould always walk away.

  I needed to be that girl so that I could keep myself safe, so that I would never end up desperate and alone and scared like my mother. Then two men made me fall for them. Hard. They both walked away at the same time. And look, I could handle the hit to my pride. I can pull up my big girl panties to deal with the humiliation of that.

  It’s the blows they dealt to my heart that left me broken. Shattered. I’m like a cartoon statue that’s been hammered. There’s a crack at the impact. The crack spreads into a thousand fractures, until I’m made of a million pieces. There’s a moment in the show when I’m frozen in air that way, and that’s how I’ve been living these past six months—the pieces suspended, waiting to fall. There’s no way to avoid it; the killing blow already happened.

  For a moment he looks bereft. “Good,” he repeats.

  It breaks my heart a little, that this handsome, virile, charming man would doubt himself. That I ever let him think I wanted Christopher instead of him. “You were enough for me, Sutton. You were enough for anyone.”

  He gives a slight shake of his head as if waking from a dream. “It doesn’t matter. There’s nothing between us except the library now. Nothing holding us together anymore.”

  It makes me wonder what had held us together before. Attraction? Chemistry? We’d had those in spades, but I remember the wry tone when he’d said, I’m the last person to judge you. It makes me wonder if it had been Christopher binding us together all along.

  “There’s something I should tell you. The library…” My breath catches. “It’s more than a restoration. More than rebuilding the front wall. It’s in bad shape. I think the wrecking ball made the building weaker, in places we can’t even see.”

  He studies me. “Are you saying you think I can’t save it?”

  We aren’t only talking about the library. “I’m asking you to try.”

  “And if it can’t be saved?”

  The thought sucks the air out of my body, leaving me hollow and thin. There are only two things I’ve fought for—my mother’s life and the library. It’s only a matter of time before I lose the first one. I can’t bear to lose the other one, too. It would break me.

  Some of my despair must show on my face, because Sutton’s jaw clenches. “How bad are we talking, Harper?”

  “You aren’t my first stop. I asked every construction company in Tanglewood to look at the library. None of them would even bid on it. They said it has to be destroyed.”

  I’m expecting a construction crew complete with cranes and drills and whatever else they use to fix old libraries. Instead it’s just Sutton driving a black Explorer, pulling up in the small parking lot between the library and the wasteland that is the west side of the city.

  He tells me he has to take a look at the building before he can call a crew and give them information, so I wander through the shelves while he pokes around in the back rooms and climbs into the attic. He comes out smelling of dust and mothballs.

  “So what do you think?” I know I must look too hopeful. I sound too hopeful, like someone who doesn’t see that the building is literally falling down around us. It might be asking for a miracle, but when you’re staring death in the face, that’s what you need.

  He looks up at the broken stained-glass window. “Harper.”

  “I mean I know it’s kind of a mess.” A strange little laugh escapes me. “It’s actually missing the whole front wall. And there’s all this rubble everywhere. I’m sure we can sweep that up.”

  Blue eyes darken. “Harper.”

  “And then there’s the whole foundation issues. I’m not saying it will be easy.”

  “I need you to tell me why. Why do you want to do this?”

  “Why don’t I want to do this, that should be the question. Because it will be amazing for the community. Did you notice all the buildings falling down around us? The crime rate around here is… well, you know, it’s bad. Books are the answer to that, Sutton.”

  A long pause and then with exasperation he says, “Harper.”

  “Okay.” I close my eyes tight. “Okay. I’ll tell you. But I don’t even fully understand it myself. I just know that there are only two things I care about—my mother and this library. I can’t lose both of them.” I already lost my father. I already lost Christopher and Sutton. People leave, but I can at least save the building. I can at least have smooth wood and concrete.

  He looks away again, this time toward the wall. “Even if I agree to take on this project, even if I try to save the building, you understand there’s a chance it won’t work. Hell, we shouldn’t even be standing here without support beams and hard hats. This whole thing could come crashing down on our heads.”

  I can’t help my squeal of delight. “So you’ll take the job!”

  “I didn’t say that.”

  That makes me hop around and clap. “You’re totally going to do it. Thank you, thank you, thank you. You don’t know how much this means to me.”

  He looks grim. “I think I actually might.”

  I stretch up on my toes and kiss his cheek. “I knew I could count on you. Everyone was like, no one would be crazy enough to take on this project.” I use my best asshole-contractor voice. “And I was like, you know who’d be crazy enough?”

  “Sutton Mayfair.”

  “That’s right, Sutton Mayfair.”

  He turns serious. “How’s your mother?”

  My stomach knots the way it always does when I think of her. “They say she has six months to live. I don’t understand how they calculate that. A hundred and eighty days.”

  “Are you sure you wouldn’t rather spend the time with her? The library will be here when you’re ready to work on it. You don’t have to do this now.”

  There’s a shudder, and then a rain of dusty concrete falls on us. Sutton pushes me under the circular library desk. The feel of his hands on something so innocuous as my arms, and suddenly I’m flashing back to the time he bent me over the desk. So much has changed since then. I thought I might be able to save my mother with impossible treatments.

  I still had hope.

  I’m not sure the library really would be here in six months, if we didn’t do this now. The building is dying. My mother is dying. There’s only one hundred and eighty days left.

  “I’m not going to be the one drilling holes in the floors,” I say softly. “That will be you and whoever you’re working with. I only want to save the wall. If I can do that, if I can fix that terrible crack with my own two hands—”

  I break off and stare at my hands, the nails cracked from the woodwork I’ve been testing out. My palms rough and calloused from years of painting. These are not delicate hands.

  “I have to do something,” I whisper, and it’s like a confessional under that circular desk. “I have to fix something, and I think I might be the one running out of time.”

  There’s an enigma among painters. Let’s say an artist studies and practices for twenty-five years of her life. Then she spends two hours painting a masterpiece. So did it take her two hours to create it? Or twenty-five years?

  I don’t know the answer to that, but I do know that sculpting a wall three stories high would take my entire life. There are splinters in my palm, open cuts on my fingers, and a deep purple bruise on my thumb caused by a rogue mallet. The block of oak looks more like a child’s forgotten pile of Play-Doh than the angular bison I’m trying to re-create.

  A pigeon flies across the open space, landing on an old green dust-covered lamp. The whole building seems to shift and sigh, as if its alive. As if it’s hurting.

  Sutton spent the past week with structural engineers and contractors who told him the same thing they told me—the library is broken beyond repair. While it stands now, the essence of the building is too weak to hold forever. And once construction begins, with its banging and its jostling, the whole thing might come down. It’s a hazard. An accident waiting to happen.

  Which is why I didn’t tell Sutton that
I was coming today.

  He drove to his ranch today to work with Gold Rush. That’s the name of the white-beige horse with fear and defiance in her eyes. If he’s gone too long, he would lose her trust. That’s what he told me last night when he called. He also told me that the library is a hopeless cause.

  I study the grain of the wood, the way it fought the trowel.

  There are woodworkers more qualified than me. Really any of them are more qualified than me. I’ve done basic sculpture as part of my degree and even used small wood pieces in some of my mixed media work. Nothing on this scale, but I can’t give up the project. Even as much as I trust Sutton to save the building, as much as I hope he actually will, the wall has to be mine.

  Maybe it’s becoming an obsession.

  As much of an obsession as the shiny mall had been to Christopher.

  “What are you doing here?”

  I turn back to see him stepping through the plastic sheeting, his eyes black with fury. It’s like I’ve conjured him from my mind. He can’t be real. Can’t. Be. Even as he kicks aside pieces of debris and storms closer, even as the dust parts for him like the goddamn Red Sea, I’m sure he’s part of my imagination. I must have inhaled more varnish than I thought.

  He grasps my arms, both of them, hauling me up. I gasp at the sudden movement. The trowel I was holding clatters to the floor. Those black eyes sear me, accusatory and cold.

  “I said, what the hell are you doing here?”

  “Rumpelstiltskin,” is all I can manage to say, which makes me sound crazy.

  Christopher Bardot has always had that effect on me. From the time I was fifteen years old, he made me stutter and stumble. But he doesn’t disappear when I say his name.

  Instead he looks incredulous. “This building should be condemned.”

  I yank away from him, only able to breathe again when he’s no longer touching me. “This building is none of your concern. Not after you sold it to me. For a ridiculous price, I should mention.”

  “It’s my concern if it crashes to the ground next to my luxury condos.”

  “Oh no.” I manage a laugh that sounds haughty and unafraid. As if I’m not shaking inside. “Sutton told me you’re still developing in the west end. I’ll stay out of your business if you stay out of mine.”